_Vailima_, _Samoa_, _Feb._ 1892.
MASTER,—A plea from a place so distant should have some weight, and from
a heart so grateful should have some address. I have been long in your
debt, Master, and I did not think it could be so much increased as you
have now increased it. I was long in your debt and deep in your debt for
many poems that I shall never forget, and for _Sigurd_ before all, and
now you have plunged me beyond payment by the Saga Library. And so now,
true to human nature, being plunged beyond payment, I come and bark at
your heels.
For surely, Master, that tongue that we write, and that you have
illustrated so nobly, is yet alive. She has her rights and laws, and is
our mother, our queen, and our instrument. Now in that living tongue
_where_ has one sense, _whereas_ another. In the _Heathslayings Story_,
p. 241, line 13, it bears one of its ordinary senses. Elsewhere and
usually through the two volumes, which is all that has yet reached me of
this entrancing publication, _whereas_ is made to figure for _where_.
For the love of God, my dear and honoured Morris, use _where_, and let us
know _whereas_ we are, wherefore our gratitude shall grow, whereby you
shall be the more honoured wherever men love clear language, whereas now,
although we honour, we are troubled.
Whereunder, please find inscribed to this very impudent but yet very
anxious document, the name of one of the most distant but not the
youngest or the coldest of those who honour you.